


The Emperor’s Dragons, or, Exiles of Andea

by Eclipse_Tyrant



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bronze Age, But fear the Fire more, Dragon Riders, Dragons, Dragonscale, Fear the dark, Gen, M/M, Magic is Coming, No Fallen Empires Here, Obsidian, Rising Empires, Sun Motif, Symbolism, Symbolism Overdose, War, War Crimes, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27822712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eclipse_Tyrant/pseuds/Eclipse_Tyrant
Summary: In the Imperium of Andea, one in a thousand men can ride a dragon. Such men have a bond with a fire-breathing monster capable of laying waste to entire cities. Those who do so are second only to the Imperial Family, and gain opportunities unheard of for many. In return, they are expected to risk life and limb for the Imperium.Three riderless dragons are available, and three people are willing to face the fire.Jacerion is a noble bastard, and all he wishes is to be acknowledged by his father. The only way for a bastard to be made legitimate is to tame a dragon.Iriena’s parents wish to marry her off when she turns sixteen. To escape that fate, she dresses in her dead brother’s clothes and escapes in the night to try her luck.Aren’s father died facing a dragon many say is untamable. Aren himself will not live out his days as a simple fisherman. He wishes to succeed where his father failed.Drawn together by fate or chance, they are soon tossed into a war that spans continents, a madwoman intent on victory, an encroaching enemy army, and a looming threat from Across the Water...
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	1. Quickening

“Fear not,” the man said. “I won’t be slain by this beast.”

He stood on a half-burned field, clothed in water-soaked leather, a black whip in hand. Next to him was a woman, with long, dark hair. Her hand was held to her belly, another resting on the man’s shoulder. A respective distance away were several other legionnaires in the Imperial Army, dressed in gleaming bronze armor and emblazoned with the Imperial Dragon. A collection of fire-blackened crags loomed. Smoke billowed from a number of cracks and caves, the glow of fire burning deep within the rock.

“I worry, honey,” the woman said. “It’s not just me who is making a sacrifice.” Her other hand brushed her belly. The man gently held her, wet leather darkening her dress.

“My dear, this is for you. If I do this, our child will never want for anything,” he said. “You know I can’t provide for you as we are. And Goddess forbid I fail, you will get a payment. It should be enough-“

“Don’t talk that way!” She shouted suddenly. A dragon’s scream tore through the air. The man looked up at the crags. There was a narrow path that wound up the cliff, ending in a jagged, vertical fissure. Within the fissure a glow of heat was visible, and a deep black shape shifted.

“Eclipse is waiting,” the man said sadly. “I love you with all my heart.”

He kissed her softly, longingly, and turned towards the crag. The woman stood tall, but tears ran down her proud face. She watched her lover climb up the rocky cliff. She was unmoved as the scream of a dragon resounded. The sound of a whip cracked, and the man shouted. For an instant she dared to hope.

There was flame, an agonized human scream, and then a sickening crunch. The woman was frozen with shock. Then a burning thing fell from the fissure, bouncing off the stones. She ran towards it, and knelt in the ash and mud to see it. 

It was her lover’s hand, blackened to the bone, still clutching the whip. She clutched the seared limb to her chest, and screamed.


	2. A Dangerous Ambition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet the first of our protagonists, Aren of the Southern Blue.

***

The waterfront tavern was packed with men and women, all talking animatedly. A boy ducked through the crowd, blond head bobbing and weaving between the benches as serving girls carried plates of meat and pitchers of ale. By the fire lounged a man with a black dragon’s head pin, animatedly describing how he’d fought an entire Reckoning of dragons to a woman.

“I tell you, that Cymmerian rider didn’t know what hit him. It was a perfect move, plunging clear through the clouds and gutting him in the saddle. Arrogance made short work of his dragon too. Thne the two others formed up right quick, but Arrogance was too clever to let them do that long…” he recounted the dance in the clouds, unaware of the boy eagerly absorbing the story from the shadows. After the rider sauntered off with the woman, the boy scurried home, winding through the lakeside piers and boats. The rings had come out of the clouds, casting a brilliant, silvered light across the lake. The boy spread his arms as he leapt across a particularly deep channel, briefly deceiving himself into believing he could fly.

_Maybe Mother can tell me how to ride_ , Aren thought in the way of children who still believe their mothers can do anything. The boy skidded to a stop in front of the boathouse he called home, and scurried up the ladder to the loft. It had once been a shabby, dark place, filled with attercop webs, but his mother and uncle had transformed it into a suitable approximation of a normal dwelling, with rooms and furniture. His mother was talking with his uncle, poring over several documents of shipping and fishing. The boy didn’t care about that, not when there was something important to tell his mother.

“Mother, mother! Can I be a dragon rider?” His mother turned to face him, face pale. He continued talking, taking her silence as an invitation to explain.“I heard a rider in the tavern, he fought the Cymm’ at the Dragon’s Wall! I want to do that too, I want to fly like him! Can I, oh please can I?” She slammed her fist on the table, silencing him. Her brother set a hand on her shoulder, and she took a deep breath.

“Do you know how your father died?” She said with forced calm. She was not her own mother, to rage and howl at her child.

Aren shook his head, still silent. His mother stood, and stalked over to a huge chest. She drew a bronze key, unlocked it. After lifting the heavy lid, she dug out a long box. Aren looked without understanding, before she set it down and began to open it.

“The boy doesn’t need to s-“ her brother began, before seeing her eyes. They were dark with emotion, on the edge of tears.

“He evidently needs to see this,” she said stiffly. Then she dropped the lid, and waved Aren onto a chair. He didn’t understand what he was seeing at first. “This is all that’s left of your father,” she said bitterly. “He died trying to tame a dragon, Eclipse, before you were born. It was utterly… meaningless. He didn’t need to risk his life, but he did. He died for you, and the little gold I got from his death allowed me to buy a ship with your uncle. I’m making a future for you right here, Aren. You don’t need to fly, not if you have a full belly and a child of your own.”

She closed the box, covering the blackened bones and coiled whip of dragonhide. Aren nodded soberly, and she gathered him up in her arms.

“I love you more than you can ever know,” she whispered. “Now, go to bed, and don’t go to taverns again. I don’t want you getting drunk until you’re a man.”

“Yes, Mother,” Aren said. Nonetheless, he dreamed of dragons that night.

***

The Southern Blue was radiant in the noon light, and the ship _Hawkwing_ sliced through the waves as easily as the sunlight. Aren perched in the rigging, one hand shading his pale blue eyes as he looked for the fish that frequented this region. The fin of a lake shark briefly broke the water, looking at least half the size of the boat itself. The black fish rolled, and slipped beneath the waves and out of sight.

Aren briefly turned his gaze to the sky, where a pair of wyverns circled. The winged snakes had learned to follow the _Hawkwing_ for a free meal, and Aren had admittedly grown fond of the reptiles. They were cunning, fierce little things, and a pretty shade of silver to boot. Uncle always denounced then as pests, but Aren’d convinced him to leave them be.

One of the two swooped low, almost striking Aren before powering into the sky. Aren chuckled, and grabbed a salted fish from his lunch sack. The wyverns dove as one, jaws wide and hissing as he threw it. One of the two snapped up the fish, and the other immediately collided and began to fight for the scrap. Aren smiled as the snakes flew off with ferocious hisses and snaps. They were almost like dragons, he imagined, although he had no way of telling for certain. No real dragons had arrived at the nameless little lakeside town for decades, and even riders seldom visited the Southern Blue. Dragons hated deep water.

He turned back to the water, searching for a school. If he was lucky, he could see an eel or horned turtle. The biggest of those could flip a boat like this, but they seldom bothered save to get at the fish. The he heard his Uncle shouting.

“Hey, boy, run on down and hear this!” He shouted. Aren waved and slid down the ropes. Moments before hitting the deck, Aren swung himself around and landed on his feet. Uncle shook his head, chucking under his breath.

“I don’t know how you do that,” he said. “Anyway, there’s something you’ll want to see.” He produced a sheet of parchment, and handed it to Aren. Aren grabbed it, and began to read his way through it. His lips moved slightly, and suddenly he looked up. Reflected sunlight glowed in his eyes.

“Uncle, this is true?” asked Aren.

“Two of the Emperor’s riders were slain on the front lines,” he said. “Their dragons are roosting at the aerie to the north, at Bitterwood. If your mother allows, you can go.” Aren’s eyes gleamed. The War had been going on for longer than Aren had been alive. Even before his father, beginning two hundred years ago, when the Imperium had been exiled from their homeland. They’d faced the Gigantes and enslaved them, but the Cymmerians had already claimed Toramalia to the south for themselves. Their dragons had attacked the Heartland, blazing a path of destruction called the Wroth.

In her anger the first Empress had called her own dragons and fought back. After she had burned them back to their lands across the Coral Sea, the Empress had raised the Dragon’s Wall along the southern coast of Andea. And then the War had truly begun, dragons fighting dragons and men clashing with men, dying for a tenuous advantage over a bitter rivalry that became almost legendary. Aren didn’t care about that. All he cared was that the aerie was home to Eclipse, who had never been tamed. The tally for that beast was at over two hundred and thirteen men and boys, and that was just those who’d officially faced it. It was whispered that Eclipse had killed twice that, hunting man and beast alike when it hungered. But it was open to any prospective tamer. With the other two dragons, it was a full Reckoning. And Aren was no longer a little boy, to be commanded by his mother. He was a man grown at six-and-ten, and no-one could stop a man who desired to try his luck.

Aren could already feel the whip in his hand.


	3. Awakened

Aren donned the soaked leathers being passed out and coiled the long whip of his father. Its barbed, black length was heavy in his hand, and a surreal feeling swept through him.

He would tame the dragon that killed his father, or he would be burned and eaten. There was no middle ground. He looked at the deep, broad pits, at the layer of cracked and shattered bones, at the caked soot. Aren stood still as the animals were herded into three of the ten pits, horses and cattle and sheep led into an abattoir of ash. He remained still as the other boys jostled and murmured, each eager to see a dragon in the scales. Aren was from a fishing town, far from the Emperor’s dragons. The closest he’d ever gotten to a dragon before now was a dragon-binder who’d passed through, and the blackened bones of his father’s forearm. These boys, for the most part, were born and raised near here. They may not have seen a dragon, but they’d heard them scream. They’d seen the charred bodies of the would-be dragon binders who’d come before. Aren glanced over at one of the other boys, Jacerion. In his home village, Aren’d never seen a person with dark hair like that, or purple eyes.

A great horn was blown, resounding off the towering crags in the distance. A dragon screamed, broad, silent wings raising a hot wind. The animals panicked, bleating and whinnying as the beast ascended into the sky.

Aren had heard that dragons were black, but this was something else. This was such an alien, light-drinking black as to be impossible to guess the speed and size of the beast. Aren’s eyes slid off of the beast’s scales, unable to hold or focus on the dragon. It made him nauseous, and the beast’s speed didn’t help. He’d heard the effect was called dragon-sickness. Or was that the effect of a dragon’s blood? He didn’t know, and he cursed his lack of knowledge.

The dragon’s scream echoed, and the horn blew again.

“That’s Shade. He’s a vicious one, he is,” one legionnaire said. “He’s killed half a hundred boys this past year alone.”

Aren saw a few boys leaving, heads low in shame as they turned in their whips and sodden jerkins. He sighed in pity. Not all men were made to face the fire, he knew, but he couldn’t understand why. Aren turned back in time to see another dragon rise from the crags to pursue Shade. Jaws snapped, dark embers and pale smoke trailing behind the two serpents. Their black wings beat with a sound like a crack of thunder, tails snapping like vast whips as iron jaws bit and yawned. Then the second dragon, undoubtably Smoke, dove. The black outline of the dragon rippled with wakened heat, and the air glowed as Smoke drew breath.

A river of sun-bright flames was unleashed and hair, hide, and horn went up in fire as the animals shrieked. The sound was incredible, a roar louder than the raging sea and as powerful as a volcano. Aren’s arms warded off the heat billowing from the inferno, sopping leather steaming. Some boys stepped back, their faces peeled as if sunburned, but Aren stood firm. This was nothing. The real test was within the pit.

The other dragon, Shade, plunged into the next pit with a second burst of flames. Aren watched as the fury faded, as the dragons began to rip into charred meat. The sounds of cracking bone was loud in the aftermath of the godlike noise of dragonfire. After a minute, the legionnaire blasted with his horn once again, to signal the last dragon come and feed.

Eclipse did not appear.

“Go, boys!” One man shouted. “The dragons’ll fly soon!”

With that, the bravest charged down the carven ladders and leapt into the pits to face the beasts. Aren waited on the edge. He would only face Eclipse. If he needed, he’d climb the damn crags and face the dragon in its lair. While Aren waited, he watched the boys going after Shade. Now that the dragon was grounded, it was far easier to look at it and guess its size.

One blond boy cracked his whip, shouting the beast’s name. Shade lifted his head, boiling blood dribbling from its maw. The fangs were black enough to seemingly drink the light of the blazing carcass. The boy, emboldened, shouted some brave words and advanced to strike at the thirty-ton demon’s side. Shade raised its wings and beat them once, twice, before screaming at the boy. The boy whipped it across the face, and the dragon twisted to strike him with its tail. 

The boy flew in two pieces, one clean out of the pit and the other into the stone wall. Aren remembered how he’d bragged about his chances of taming, and shook his head slightly. A few boys fled, but another stepped up and faced the beast. A blast of fire immolated him, and a pair of jaws cut from the blackness of midnight crunched close around his burning form. With a smooth motion, he was swallowed whole.

One boy grabbed a charred sheep and threw it at the dragon. It snapped the animal out of the air, gulping it down as it turned to face the boy. He shouted its name and hurled another chunk of cooked flesh at Shade. It burned the meat and devoured it with gusto.

The boy snapped his whip, and the dragon’s long tail lashed as it stretched low to the floor of the pit. Shade hissed deeply, drooling jaws resting against the ground. The boy took a step forward, the beast not reacting in the slightest. The boy reached out with one hand. Shade pushed forward, a forked black tongue flickering out briefly. The boy began to stroke its snout with a gloved hand as the legionaries jumped in to pull the burned and wounded from the beast’s sight.

Aren moved to the next pit, where Smoke was thrashing and screaming. One boy tried to leap on his back, only to be seared by the dragon’s heat and thrown. The beast was in a rage, empty black wings beating at the ground as dragonfire lanced from within its jaws. Smoke screamed, a wing clawing out. The two thumb talons sliced through a boy, and he fell back with a choked scream as he clutched his eviscerated belly. Smoke then bathed him in fire, a molten tide that inundated the ground. With a snap, the boy was bitten clean in half, and wolfed down. The air rippled around it like a living kiln, flames dancing along the ground beneath its serpentine body. Sparks flew from the jagged jaws, fangs clashing with a sound like dozens of swords striking as one.

As boys fled, burned and bleeding, one advanced to tame the beast. Aren recognized Jacerion, and his hands clenched hard enough to draw blood.

Jacerion snapped his whip and shouted at the dragon to bend. Smoke screamed as if wounded and made to burn him. Jacerion lightly jumped from the path of the fire, and shouted again. Smoke screamed with a hissing cadence, wings rattling and scales clicking as it turned to keep the boy in sight. Jacerion just dodged the next blast of fire, and whipped the beast across the head. Smoke’s black wings beat together, and fell flat against the ground. The dragon stretched flat, jaws closing as it hissed a stream of steaming breath. The surviving boys fled as fast as their legs could take them, as Aren sighed in relief. He didn’t understand why he cared about him. Then, a shadow swept across the sun and killed the light.

Eclipse screamed as it descended.

Aren grinned and readied his whip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a time skip, and the next few chapters will develop some of the other characters we see here. We’ll also see some past events soon.
> 
> A note on the dragons: As they fly due to exotic physics, they don’t have weight-saving measures. A dragon is denser than any similar-sized bird, and more comparable to a T. rex with crocodile armor that can fly and breath fire.


	4. Interlude- 200 Years Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A flash into the life of the Empress who saved the Exiles and brought them across the sea.

The Empress, Daughter of the Goddess Above, glared across the broad river to the gathered Gigantean army from the summit of a rocky outcropping. The barbarians stood twice the height of her men, even taller than herself. They milled about, long, golden hair shimmering in the sun of this strange land. Their skin was pale, white as milkglass, and despite their size they were gracefully made. Their weapons were long clubs, studded with masterfully carven obsidian blades. With their strength, they could cut a man in half. She’d seen it in person. Fanciful banners depicting seashells and great lake creatures waved in the hot breeze, a contrast to her own black dragon insignia.

On her side of the river, her forces were assembled in orderly ranks. Bronze armor shone in the sun, polished as their helms and spears. They were less numerous than the leather-clad warriors, but far more disciplined. They were her Legions, who had crossed the Water with her when all others denounced her. She trusted them with her life, and they did the same in return. She remembered the victories they’d already won, and smiled with pride.

The footsteps of her favored Prince Consort reached her ears.

“You may speak,” she said. He coughed, doubtless from the smell of the Gigantes’s camp.  
  
“My Lady, your son Velisian… he fell in battle. An arrow caught a gap in his armor, and the wound putrified. His dragon has joined the wild ones, making two Reckonings out of our control,” he said quietly. She breathed deep. How had she not remembered this?  
  
“And we have three Reckonings still under our power,” she whispered, silently mourning her son. Grief was not something she could afford now, not when her forces and slaves muttered of fleeing this blasted land. Her memories told her that there was no safe land beyond here, only hostile seas and Antediluvia, lost to them for their crimes. But here, if she had the will, her memories told her that the most powerful empire of the world would be born. But it would cost her so much more than a beloved son.

“My Prince, our dragon riders are out of range. There is an army of Gigantes as well, approaching to reinforce the enemies across the river. What will we do?” The Empress flexed her gauntleted hand, watching as the shifting layers of her black, crystalline coat slid. After her last daughter, so little of her remained human. That was Mother’s price, after all, and she was a dutiful daughter.

“The two Reckonings, they are close enough for me to touch them,” The Empress declared, as she sifted through layers of memory to confirm what she said. “What I touch, I command.” Her eyes closed, and she felt the dragons clinging to their new cliffs. Her daughters would have struggled with one, but she was the Daughter of the Goddess and nothing was beyond her mind and soul.

“Rise. Fly. Fight. Your Mother declares it so,” she said, as her soul’s light coiled around the great beasts. They stirred, wings extending and rattling as jaws opened to scream their awakening. The Reckonings took wing at her command, and in her flesh she could feel the hot winds scour her exposed face and toss her dragon-dark hair. One seventh part of her soul made her face smile, as her eyes lit up with divine light.

“Let there be smoke and screams!” She shouted, and then the dragons were plunging from the clouds like the Goddess’s own lances. The dragons were black as the Hells, and a normal woman would have been unable to keep her eyes fixed on the beasts. But she was of divine race, and her eyes found all six in turn, even as she controlled them with six-sevenths of her being. She felt the blood boil in their bodies, stoked the kiln of their flesh, and unleashed six long tongues of brilliant flame. With the dragon’s senses she could see flesh boil and burst like swollen blisters, smell the charring meat, and hear the agonized screams. With another pass, the riverbank began to melt into glass, water screaming as liquid stone and burning Gigantes plunged into the river. A blinding inferno roiled across the camp, consuming men and tent with the ferocity of a starving man.

A third wash of light disintegrated the burning remnant of the army, but her vengeance was not sated. Her son had died in this foreign land, and with his blood she would pay for his killer’s deaths. She spurred the dragons onwards, the beating of their wings tearing up the ground and frightening the few animals who had escaped their ravenous hunger. Lancing flames devoured the treetops as they passed, starting fires that her future memories told her would drive away the second army.

But it was not enough. Her people could not rule these Gigantes until they were convinced resistance was futile. She needed a symbol. And there was only one symbol these barbarians held in common.

Her Reckonings howled against her will, and she loosed one. The three wheeled and settled upon a row of jagged crags, and the other Reckoning flew on to the so-called City of Clouds. It was not carven by these Gigantes, instead being a natural formation of caves and towers. Tents and sheets, banners and clothes, all waved in the scouring winds in the wake of the flight of her Reckoning. Three narrow paths led away from the mountain peak the City was built upon, and her dragons spat flame. Tents burned, stone melting like wax as her Reckoning circled the mountain. Before long, it wore a belt of gleaming orange stone, waterfalls of molten rock falling into the deep valley that rested in the mountain’s shadow. Then, with all retreat cut off, her dragons rose as one until the air grew thin beneath their edgeless wings.

Then they plunged, fire building as the Empress wept for the lives she would take.

The first blast annihilated thousands, women, aged, and children going up in flame. The dragon’s rage drove them on, a pyre of dragon’s fire searing the rocks and filling the caves with rivers of stone. She heard their screams, tearful prayers and desperate attempts to claw through the rocky caves and into the sky. Flaming Gigantes leapt to their deaths, and her Reckoning screamed a blazing inferno.

When it was done, her soul collapsing back into herself, she fell to her knees and vomited bile and blood.  
  
“I’ll disappear soon,” she murmured. “My crimes require penance. My son… I’ll see you once more. I swear it by Goddess and Bright One.”


End file.
